"Dan, hold on just a little longer, I'll heal you..."
In a forest during a rainy night, several ninjas surrounded a mortally wounded man in absolute silence. Aside from the pattering of the rain, only a woman's desperate pleas could be heard.
Her hands kept channeling chakra into the ninja lying before her, but the ninja named Dan was already breathing more than he was taking in.
"No... you promised me..."
The woman's pleading voice trembled, her face already streaked with tears, though they were washed away over and over again by the rain. Soaked to the bone, she looked utterly disheveled and pitiful.
The companions surrounding her wanted to speak but swallowed their words, making the heavy atmosphere even more oppressive.
Every bit of this scene was witnessed by a young man standing in a tree not far away.
The young man had long, shoulder-length black hair and cold, serpentine eyes. However, as he looked at the weeping woman ahead, a trace of reluctance flickered in his gaze.
This young man was none other than Orochimaru, and the only woman who could ever draw such an expression from him was Tsunade of the Senju, his fellow Sannin.
Shortly before, Chiyo, a ninja from Sunagakure, had personally led a squad of elite Sunagakure ninja to raid Konoha. Kato Dan, on patrol duty, had taken the initiative, leading his small ninja squad alone to intercept them.
Tsunade, who had just returned from a mission in the Land of Rain, happened to be among them. The two had been like newlyweds after a long parting, clinging to each other constantly during that period.
Chiyo and Tsunade had engaged in a duel of Medical Ninjutsu, while Kato Dan had wreaked havoc on the battlefield using the bug-like Spirit Transformation Technique.
At first, indeed, no one could stop him. But the elite ninja of Sunagakure were no pushovers; after losing over twenty comrades to Kato Dan, they finally seized an opportunity and dealt a vicious blow to his physical body.
Two fists could not match four hands. Facing overwhelming odds, Kato Dan found himself stretched too thin, and a single moment of carelessness sealed his doom.
When Orochimaru arrived upon hearing the news, Kato Dan was already breathing his last.
"Things with physical form will inevitably perish eventually; only things without form are eternal."
Even accustomed as he was to life and death on the battlefield, facing someone he knew well, Orochimaru—renowned for his cold, ruthless, and decisive nature—could not remain entirely unmoved.
Kato Dan was Tsunade's lover, but he was also a familiar companion. Looking at Kato Dan, who had already drawn his last breath, and then at Tsunade, who was weeping in sheer terror and agony...
Perhaps unable to bear such a suffocating environment, Orochimaru exerted force with his feet and vanished from the spot the next moment.
The Sunagakure ninja had already scattered and fled. Chiyo, slightly outmatched in her clash with Tsunade, had gained no advantage and was now retreating from the battlefield with her remaining few ninja.
"Lord Chiyo, our raid suffered heavy losses. Are we just going to let it end like this?"
A ninja clutching a wound spoke to Chiyo. From his feeble tone, it was clear he was badly hurt as well.
"We underestimated Konoha's strength after all. This operation was a bit hasty, and I didn't expect Konoha to react so quickly. I miscalculated the time it would take them to return from the Land of Rain."
Chiyo, marching rapidly through the rainy night toward the outer edges of the Land of Fire, spoke in a rather grim tone.
Originally, they had planned to launch a surprise attack on Konoha while the majority of its elite ninja were deployed to assault the Land of Rain.
Their plan had been sound; Sunagakure had first sent Chiyo's son and daughter-in-law—the parents of Sasori of the Red Sand.
What they never anticipated was that even with Konoha's forces depleted to unprecedented levels, the God of Shinobi, Hatake Sakumo, was still holding down the fort.
The two had arrived full of bluster and arrogance, only for Hatake Sakumo to cut them down one by one with a single stroke each.
This suicidal delivery of heads overnight instantly skyrocketed the White Fang's renown, making him a match for the newly minted Sannin.
That was the background for Sunagakure's current operation, which could be said to be driven entirely by a thirst for revenge.
"Though we lost many comrades, we also took out that troublesome fellow from Konoha. Word has it he was Tsunade's lover, too."
Recalling Kato Dan's Spirit Transformation Technique, the ninja's eyes still brimmed with apprehension, though his tone carried a strong sense of vindication and schadenfreude.
"Pick up the pace. Konoha's ninja have caught up."
With those words, Chiyo hastily planted a few simple Explosive Tag traps along the route. She didn't expect them to inflict heavy casualties on the pursuers; she merely hoped to stall their steps and buy more time for her group.
Before long, a ninja with dripping wet long hair arrived right at the trap site Chiyo and her group had set up.
The moment his foot touched down, a crackling series of explosions erupted all around him, instantly swallowing him whole.
The sudden flash of fire in the rainy night illuminated the surrounding forest, and other pursuing Konoha ninja cast glances toward the spot.
Through the lingering smoke, a pair of cold, serpentine eyes came into view.
"Sunagakure ninja, you truly deserve to die!"
It was Orochimaru, who had caught up. He stared coldly ahead, his tongue involuntarily flicking across his lips.
Seeing that it was Orochimaru, the other Konoha ninja relaxed. They could easily handle that level of attack themselves, let alone someone of Orochimaru's rising fame.
Just as Orochimaru intended to continue the pursuit, a sudden, sharp pain flared in his head, causing his already-advancing stride to halt abruptly.
The next moment, Orochimaru's body pitched forward out of the tree, falling silently into the pitch-black night without drawing the notice of the other ninja, the drumming sound of the pouring rain entirely masking the impact of his landing.
The next day, Konoha Hospital.
Orochimaru slowly opened his eyes. The morning sunlight streamed through the window onto his face, giving his pale complexion a somewhat sickly tint.
"Where am I?"
Before he could fully clear his bleary vision, a flood of memories rushed into his mind, draining his strength and forcing him to lie back down helplessly.
He had no idea how much time passed before Orochimaru opened his eyes once more, though confusion and disbelief still lingered within them.
He had originally been a twenty-first-century scientific researcher. While out collecting specimens one day, he was accidentally bitten by a small white snake, and before his colleagues could get him to the hospital, he had already breathed his last.
When he woke up again, he was indeed in a hospital, but it was no longer the hospital of the world he once knew.
Through the original owner's memories, he learned the identity of the body's former owner and the world to which he now belonged.
Sitting up on the bed, Orochimaru carefully inspected his attire and pinched his arm hard; the sharp pain confirmed to him that none of this was a dream.
"To think I would experience transmigration one day, and end up in this body just from getting bitten by a snake."
Orochimaru let out a long sigh toward the ceiling. When other people transmigrated, they either became members of bloodline-limit clans like the Uchiha or Hyuga, or possessed the Sage Body of the Senju and Uzumaki clans.
While Orochimaru's background wasn't bad, in a shinobi world defined by bloodlines, his upper limit simply couldn't compare to those favored sons of heaven.